Vitals (13 page)

Prickles up my spine.

Bettina whispered in his ear. AY blinked in irritation.

"Forgive me," he said. "The worst part of this ... is the loss of my memory, and for me, memory is soul. Your brother was a great man. Greater than you, and more powerful. He used to call and talk to me. Give me advice. Instructions."

My face burned.

"Much greater than you," AY persisted. "Definitely the smarter brother."

"Hush," Bettina said.

"Why did you call Dr. Mauritz?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes up and coughed gently into a handkerchief. Bettina gave me a fierce glare. How dare you upset him. How dare you rise to the bait of a sick old man. And she was right, but I had to know.

"I do not remember a Dr. Mauritz," he said when he had his wind back. "But yes, I probably called him. I was told to call a number of people." AY threw his hand back as his wife again tried to shush him, then pretended to wave at the enthusiasts taking their seats near the

front of the hall. "Why waste your time here? You don't belong, Henry. This is a meeting of gifted dilettantes. Go do your important work, while you can. This is old home week for me. They'll celebrate my influence and ignore all my warnings, my feeble ... warnings."

"Just hush," Bettina insisted, more forcefully. He waved her off again, leaned over to push aside a folding chair, then rolled himself closer. Bettina stood back with arms crossed, tired of his obtuseness.

AY came within whispering distance. His breath smelled of bad teeth and poor nutrition. "Do you have any idea what men of ill will can do? What they can take from you?" His voice sounded like two crackers rubbed together. "I'm a dying old man, not worth killing. I'm just good for running errands. But you and Rob, you're the real thing. They know what you're doing."

Four young Caucasian men in black jeans walked past, accompanied by two Asiatic girls. They were doubtless part of Phil's cyberjock contingent. Asiatic girlfriends were de rigueur. They nodded to AY with admiring smiles.

He sat up, moving his lips silently until they were out of earshot. Then he focused on me, pleading. "Listen to Flora Ramone. She's speaking today at three. The rest..." He made a pfft noise. "To think we could ever master the future without truly knowing the past. Don't take those calls. Don't take them."

Another fit of coughing grabbed the patriarch of longevity. Bettina hurried him out of the hall, eager to get away from me.

Against all my instincts, I stayed and listened to Flora Ramone at four in the afternoon--the conference was running late.

She gave a painfully slow, detailed talk, with many diagrams, on social organization and the quest for cellular immortality in neoplasms-cancerous tumors. She warmed to her subject, eyes gleaming.

The cells went rogue. They cut themselves loose from the cellular

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police, encouraged the growth of knots of arteries, demanded resources beyond their needs. They reproduced wildly and refused to obey the signals that demand self-identification and, failing that, apoptosis--cellular suicide.

Tumors had a certain arrogance and presumption. They reproduced at will--will was one of the operative words. They exhibited free will, free of the larger body. The cells within the tumors tried to make their own society, but having cut loose from the sophisticated controls of the larger organism, they reverted to a more primitive and self-serving kind of biological "politics."

Tumors often failed to feed all their component cells, and cell death--necrosis--was one consequence. If they sent out missionaries to spread the gospel of freedom and liberation, death of the larger organism was all too often the final result.

"Tumors strive to break their bonds and live forever. Freedom is their quest, but they bring disorder and death," she concluded. "How are we any different? If we, as individuals, strive to live past our natural lifetimes, what do we contribute to the whole of humanity? Are we smarter at one hundred and fifty then we were at forty? What if we stand in the way of the young? What if we demand all the available resources and starve our society, or go off on eccentric quests that ignore a larger wisdom? Are we then biologically any different, any less malignant, than tumors?"

Silence met her conclusion. Few liked what they had heard. Dr. Ramone fielded a scatter of hostile questions, with little effect. The audience broke up into murmuring groups. Alone on the stage, she raised her eyebrows, sadly tapped her papers on the podium, and stepped down.

I watched her, gritting my teeth.

Castler approached me in a seethe. He shook his composer's mane and glared at the oak beams high above. "She's put a damper on the whole afternoon. That was inexcusably myopic. What is she, a Marxist."

I've always hated the naysayers, those who argue for an end to

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controversial research for the greater short-term good of the whole. But what made me really angry was that I had no convincing argument to refute Dr. Ramone's quiet and persistent polemic.

AY's pronouncement and Dr. Ramone's talk had sucked all the energy out of me. Going for a long trek around Berkeley before returning to my apartment seemed the best remedy for my funk. I walked toward the dark oak doors at the rear of the hall.

"Hal Cousins?"

A shadow in the corner broke free and approached. My first instinct was to back away, but there was neither room nor time. The shadow, as it emerged into the afternoon sunlight, became a short, handsome man in his fifties, with graying temples, a distinct hooked nose, and thick, perfectly formed, aristocratic eyebrows. He was shabbily dressed in a tweed suit with frayed cuffs, a once-expensive linen shirt with a collar worn through by too many pressings, and polished brown Oxfords snubbed high at the toes. He carried something under his buttoned coat--he seemed a little pigeon-breasted.

"You should never have come here," he said. "Far too obvious." His accent was hard to place--English with a touch of Eastern European, I guessed. He had an Ace bandage wrapped around his left hand, wrist to knuckles, held by a metal clip. He noticed my attention and tucked the hand firmly in his pocket. "Your brother might have mentioned me. I am K. Shall we leave--this?" He thrust out an elbow like a stubby bird's wing. "Let's find some obscure place to talk. We'll toast your brother's memory and try to get drunk."

"Hard liquor is the ideal," K explained, and made a sour face as we took a seat in a back booth at Pascal's, a pub on College Avenue.

The dark room, illuminated by small yellow parchment lamps and a tiny skylight in the center of the pressed-copper ceiling, smelled of hops and sawdust sprinkled over the brick floor. "Wine is acceptable," he added. "Beer... not very reliable. Water, forbidden, unless we buy it sealed and pick our store at random. Can you guess why?"

"Poison?" I ventured.

Again the sour face, a comment on my naivete. "I saw AYin the auditorium," he said, as if to change the subject. "Did he say anything to you?"

"He's dying," I said, and gave a small shiver. "Something about having his strings pulled."

K made a snuffle of acid amusement. "Did he mention Silk?"

"Silk?" Not silt, I thought.

"Silk," he affirmed.

"No."

"Then he doesn't know. They pull strings," K said. "The true Illuminati. I've spent the last fifteen years tracking down its history. The damned Jews blocked me every step of the way."

I stared at him intently. Thought about just getting up and leaving the bar. One problem with libertarians, scientific elitists, and other rugged individualists is that a significant minority of them hold odd and sometimes pernicious views about races and religions other than their own. Think The Bell Curve and you'll know the type.

"Are you sure we have anything to discuss?"

"Your brother believed we did," K said, his expression hardening. "He recommended you talk to me, right?"

"My brother led his own life, and I lead mine."

Our drinks arrived. I had ordered a Scotch, something I enjoyed but rarely indulged in. K slugged back his bourbon neat and opened a bottle of club soda, listening for the hiss of escaping gas, then swallowed that down immediately after.

"Oh, don't get me wrong," K said, arching those dramatic dark brows in a way that suggested Errol Flynn. "The Jews, too, have their

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strings pulled." His features seemed to melt, as if he were a chastened puppy. A drifting sadness filmed his eyes and his lips twisted, the words were difficult to control. "Forgive me," he said. "It's a nervous tic. You'll get used to it. It's dogged me for twenty years now. Ruined my whole, fucking, life."

Just as quickly, the arch, self-assured face returned. The transformation was startling. "We are going to do this in stages. Less cautious, sooner dead. You have no idea who I am?"

"Just K," I said. "Like in The Trial"

"Your brother told you nothing more?"

"Nothing."

"How close are you to your goal, Dr. Cousins?"

I examined his face for a moment, wondering whether or not to lie. "Pretty close," I said. "A few years, maybe less."

"Rob was at Lake Baikal. He died in New York. Do you have any idea what that means?"

"No," I said.

"There is a war," K said. "Your brother found himself in the thick of it--targeted because of his research."

"Rob and I were--are--doing research in life extension. I know it's controversial, but how in the hell does it plant us in a war?"

"I am not a scientist, I'm an historian. Your brother told me to give you something. It was practically his last request ... to me." He lifted a package from under his jacket and laid it out on the table: a nine-by-twelve buff paper envelope, filled to bursting, wrapped in glossy cellophane packing tape. He pushed the envelope across the table. Scrawled across the front in Magic Marker, in Rob's blocky style, was Prince Hal Only. Out of the jaws of defeat. For you, Brother. With true love and respect. Rob Cousins.

The signature was definitely Rob's, with jaunty loops, though more ragged than I remembered.

"As you can see--"

"Please," I said. My throat tightened, and tears welled in my eyes. I wiped them hastily and took hold of the package.

K watched me. "It is from your brother," he said softly. "No contamination. His hands, to mine, to yours, and ... as you can see--"

"Please," I said.

"This is important, Dr. Cousins. He made sure the document would not be opened by anyone but you."

The envelope's flap had been taped over with embedded hairs the same color as my own, quite a few of them, arranged in a crisscross. Hairs protected the seams, as well. Paranoid. Driven. The wrapping matched the mood of Rob's last message.

"Do I look at it, then give it back to you?" I asked.

"It's yours," K said, and withdrew a handkerchief to blow his nose. "Do with it as you please. I suggest, however, that you don't read it here."

"Thank you," I said.

"Rob told me to look out for you. So be it. Things are getting rough. You must start training."

"Training for what?" I asked. Despite the envelope, I was poised to get up and walk out and leave the mysterious Mr. K to his clockwork aberrations. I will not let Rob's delusions drag me down with him.

"Survival," K said. "Do you have any money?"

I shook my head.

"I know someone in the City who is very good. She seldom takes on students as an act of charity. I hope we can find the money to pay her."

"What sort of survival--wilderness, camouflage tents, eating grubs and lizards?"

K smiled with a paternal tolerance that I found more irritating than his nervous bigotry. "She teaches people how to avoid extraordinary attempts on their lives. I'll make the appointment. Do you eat fresh fruit and vegetables?"

I looked up from the envelope. "Yes," I said, hoping I wasn't compromising some important secret.

K gave me a sharp look. "Stop now," he said. "Canned food only, and supplement it with vitamins in sealed containers. Shop at different stores, widely spaced, supermarkets preferred. Avoid strangers, or friends who behave strangely. In time, you will avoid all your friends. Friends and lovers are our greatest weakness."

I remembered the little man with the spray bottle. Surely if someone were poisoning the entire city, it would be in the news.

"Why should I do what you tell me?" I asked.

"Your brother worked hard to protect himself, and for a while, it seemed he was succeeding." He pointed to the envelope. "What he did not know, killed him." K sidled out of the booth.

My Scotch was half full.

"I'll buy this round," K said. "Talk is medicinal." I noticed for the first time that he was wearing a smooth beige glove on his unbandaged hand. He pulled money from his wallet. "They can reach us through coins and currency, you know," he murmured. "But cash is better than being tracked through credit transactions."

We walked out into the early evening. The air was sweet and mild in Berkeley, the sun filtered through a high layer of haze. I clutched Rob's envelope in both hands. Despite myself, I glanced at the people around us--a shuffling old man in filthy brown coat and unlaced boots, a glazed young woman with peach-colored hair and white skin, two moneyed types in gray suits as alike as freshly curried thoroughbreds.

"Wait," I said, stopping at the corner. "My brother's dead. What in hell did you do for him that was so great?"

It's eyes shifted. I thought he was avoiding my question. He stared east, into the hills. My nose twitched. I smelled smoke.

"Where do you live, Dr. Cousins?" he asked.

I turned. A fire burned high and bright a few blocks below the

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Claremont. Flames rose seventy or eighty feet in the still air and cast a glow on the hotel's white facade like an early sunset.

A lazy column of smoke swung west, white and greasy, like--I could not avoid the comparison--the plume over a deep-sea vent.

"Nearby," I said. "Over there."

"Let's make sure," K said. His face became ruddy with an unexpected enthusiasm, and for an instant his appearance, more than ever, was pure Errol Flynn. "It's possible they've already tagged your neighbors."